 Sfatul Țării

Sfatul Țării (Country Council; ) was a council that united political, public, cultural, and professional organizations in the greater part of the territory of the Governorate of Bessarabia in the disintegrating Russian Empire, which was transformed into a Legislative body and proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic as part of the Russian Federative Republic in December 1917, and then union with Romania in .In August 1914, the First World War started, and 300,000 Bessarabians were mobilized and enrolled in the army of the Russian Empire, the majority in the immediate wake of Russian defeat.